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WhatIsHTML
What is HTML?
HTML is a language that is used for adding format and layout to the text of web pages. An HTML page is basically just a web page; it consists of tags that you put around parts of the text to give it certain layout properties. You can use it to enclose bits of text and say things like ‘this text is a heading’, ‘this text should be written in bold’, etc.
Mediascapes can include simple web pages in the much the same way that they can include audio and images.
Using HTML
To work with HTML pages you will need to have some familiarity with HTML code. Ideally you will have had basic experience in creating a simple web page by directly editing the HTML code of the page. You can create web pages with drag and drop applications such as
DreamWeaver? , but creating pages in a drag and drop manner does not give you an insight into the inner workings and structure of the code of an HTML page.
Learning HTML
HTML is not as complex as a programming language but as you add more and more formatting to information it can get difficult to see what is going on. Having said that you can learn the basics of HTML very quickly and with those basics you can already do useful stuff.
Other things you can do
Web pages can be more than just HTML layout, they can include more complex technologies, below are are few of them:
Javascript - These are bits of programming code that do things when the page is displayed.
Style sheets – These are descriptions that control how the elements in a web page are displayed, what size and style of font, colours, alignment etc.
XML – it is possible to do complex things with web pages that can update their content from XML files in the mediascape. When a mediascape stores variables it does so in a simple XML format.
Using any of these technologies is complex, idiosyncrasies mean that the way that they are presented on the screen of the mobile device could differ from how they appear in the browser on your desktop computer or on the simulated screen of the mscape tester. You can’t do any damage if you give them a try, but the development process could be frustrating if you do not already have experience in the area.
